Elizabeth Todd-Breland
Associate Professor of History
Biography
Elizabeth Todd-Breland (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/University of Illinois Chicago)
Historian Elizabeth Todd-Breland explores how 20th-century societal shifts produced racialized political struggles for power, resources and representation that remain key issues in current urban policy debates in Chicago and across the nation.
Her book, “A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Post-Civil Rights Chicago,” analyzes changes in black politics, shifts in education organizing strategies, and the racial politics of education reform from the 1960s to the present.
Todd-Breland is also working on a digital humanities mapping project on the relationship between inequality in schools, housing and neighborhood change.
Her teaching interests and other areas of research broadly explore issues in urban history, including social and economic inequality, race, urban education, neighborhood change, urban public policy and civic engagement.
